A great white cloud filled the break of the reef. It was the Southern Cross coming in with a fair wind and a flooding tide.
The first rays of the sun were on her topsails, which the wind scarcely filled. The water under her was still violet with night. White gulls, rose-colored gulls, golden gulls, as the sunrise took them, were flocking and screaming in the pale sapphire above her, schooner, gulls, lagoon, and sky making a picture more lovely than a dream.
As she cleared the reef entrance and rounded to her anchorage, the wind spilling out of her sails, a plume of smoke broke from her, and again the report of a gun shook the island.
As it died away the splash of the anchor was followed by a roar of the chain through the hawse pipe, and the Southern Cross, her long, long journey over, lay at her moorings swinging to the incoming tide.
Isbel turned to Floyd and clung to him, weeping. All her courage had suddenly vanished now that there was no need for it.
Floyd, holding her tight in his arms, kissed her black, perfumed hair. The flower had fallen, but a trace of its scent remained.
It was the moment of his life, and then she drew away from him, cast one dark glance obliquely up at him, and stood with her breast heaving and both hands shading her eyes.
She was looking over the water in the direction of the Southern Cross.
The schooner was lowering a boat. It was the whaleboat, and Floyd saw the men tumbling into her, followed by a white-clad figure—Schumer.
Even at that distance he recognized Schumer. Following Schumer came another white-clad figure, evidently a European.